His Three Daughters review: Elizabeth Olsen, Natasha Lyonne and Carrie Coon are compelling in imperfect but affecting study in grief

Does it matter? Not really. You get on with it, you do what you can, and hope that tomorrow will be better. You do what suits you best – and that isn't always what suits others.

Anyone who's ever been in the company of a dying relative will tell you that it's in the final days – those precious moments when the clock ticks too fast and the outside world evaporates - that everything stops making sense.

Some of us bury our heads; others lash out. Some comfort and support; others try to control and criticise. Nobody is at fault and everyone deserves to be heard. All of which brings us to His Three Daughters, Azazel Jacobs's thoughtful, theatrical study of siblings in shock.

There is the passive-aggressive Katie (Carrie Coon), short on compassion and full of complaints, the sort of person who trusts nobody and disapproves of everybody.

There is Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), a gentle soul, away with the fairies perhaps, but really she's just terrified to reveal the contents of her brain. And then there is Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), a gambling pothead who only ever speaks when she's spoken to. These people are sisters, but they may as well be strangers.

The only thing holding them together is a dying father, Vincent (Jay O Sanders), who is now receiving hospice care at his New York City apartment.

This is where the drama happens. Katie trekked over from Brooklyn; Christina flew halfway across the country. Rachel, on the other hand, lives with their father, and she's been caring for him for months. It's been a while since the girls shared a living space, and you'd know it.

Katie looks down on Rachel – she criticises the contents of her fridge (three bags of apples and very little else), and forces her to smoke outside in the cold.

She's also obsessed with having her father sign a Do Not Resuscitate order – but he might be too far gone for that. The kind-hearted hospice workers do their best, but it's never enough for Katie.

Christina, meanwhile, nods her head and entertains her sisters' troubles. She has her own problems, her own concerns, but there is no time for that. Not yet.

​Rachel is a different story. She'll no longer sit in a room with her father. She isn't his biological daughter – and a mean-spirited Katie reminds her of that – but Vincent raised her, he's the man she called "dad", and she cannot bear to watch him go.

It hardly helps that Katie thinks Rachel is after their dad's apartment. Anyone paying attention will realise why she's so uptight, why Christina is quietly falling apart, and why Rachel only has apples in the fridge.

Talky and insightful, the film rarely leaves Vincent's flat, for this is the family's grief bubble, the place where everything that needs to happen will happen. As a result, Jacobs's feature sometimes resembles a filmed play, a claustrophobic chamber piece that might have been better suited to the stage.

Scrappy, naturalistic exchanges sit alongside chewy, breathless monologues. Indeed, there is a lot of acting in this film, and it loses its way somewhat with a slippery, superficial denouement. And yet, despite its flaws, or perhaps because of them, His Three Daughters is impossible to turn away from.

It's a story about what happens when families keep things to themselves for too long, and when grief finally allows them to spill out. We can all relate, and you won't find another film that better captures the profound interactions and peculiar mishaps that occur when a family member reaches the end of the road.

It isn't without a sense of humour. Lyonne's comic timing is up there with the best of them – her dramatic work here is just as strong as Coon's (a force of nature) and Olsen's (nobody does internal breakdown better than her). But it's Rachel's sarky, snappy one-liners that stay with us.

Preparing their father's obituary, Katie wonders if she might be missing something. "Married a couple of crazy bitches," adds Rachel, "raised a few crazy bitches." That's the other thing about grief – sometimes, all you can do is laugh. A film you'll be glad you watched, even when it hurts.

Four stars